Mr. Speaker, in fact, this has raised some concerns in Canada, and that is why we undertook to negotiate with the United States to improve it. The agreement we reached, after a long period of discussion, addresses those concerns by relying on the existing framework under the Canada-U.S. tax treaty.
CRA will not assist the IRS in collecting U.S. taxes, and no new taxes will be imposed on Canadians. In our negotiations, we obtained a number of concessions, including exempting certain accounts, such as RRSPs, RDSPs, TFSAs, et cetera.
I would remind my colleague opposite that without an agreement in place, our financial institutions would still have to comply with FATCA. In fact, it would have been much more onerous. FATCA would be unilaterally and automatically imposed on Canadian financial institutions by the U.S. as of July 1. These obligations would have forced Canadian financial institutions to choose between entering into an agreement with the IRS that would require them to report directly to the IRS on accounts held by U.S. residents and U.S. citizens, which would raise concerns about consistency with Canadian privacy laws, or being subject to a 30% FATCA withholding tax on U.S. source payments for not complying with FATCA. With our agreement in place, this will not happen.